Pagans' Religious Backgrounds Are Varied

Coffee brews and candlewicks burn at 6:30 a.m. as Brian Foley discovers what cards have been dealt to him this day.

Before his first cup of Folger's, before his morning business meeting, his ritual begins.

Foley's cards are Tarot cards.

"Some people read once a season. Brian reads every day," said his wife Debo rah, pulling back her hair styled like Janis Joplin's. "Then, if I ask, he tells me what's going on."

On the weekends, the Foleys are clerks at their store inside a Norfolk flea market. Monday nights, they are communal drummers.

And every day, they are Celtic Pagans.

Brian and Deborah have been sweethearts since 10th grade. Together, they opened Mystic Moon, their Pagan store, four years ago.

Next weekend, the store will be among the vendors at the annual Fall Gathering of the Tribes in Isle of Wight.

Separately, the couple's spiritual paths mirror one another.

They both had questions as children that Christian Sunday school teachers and pastors didn't want to answer. Eventually, they left the religions of their youth, learned about other traditions, met one another and together embraced Paganism.

For 25 of their 29 years of marriage, Brian worked a corporate job, while Deborah stayed home to raise their four children. Milk and cookies waited on the kitchen table when the kids came in from school.

Deborah also reached out to neighborhood children who had disinterested or absentee parents.

During those days, Deborah kept her altar and religious items in the bedroom.

"I wanted to be more subdued," said Deborah, a priestess in their clan. "I talked privately with my own kids."

But even then, each morning before Brian slipped into his navy blue business skin, before his first cup of caffeine, he read his cards. Today he keeps his suits -- but not his beliefs -- in his closet.

Each day begins with the ritual.

* * *

Ghost pounces from the windowsill, stepping across Ann Dunn's lap and arms as she types at the computer.

Years ago Dunn rescued the gray feline under a bridge where its kittens had been dumped. Ghost's nine lives were down to eight.

Pawing its way around cardboard boxes and books on the Tarot, in the temporary home of the Norfolk store, Out of the Dark Inc., Ghost and its owner look forward to a new life at the soon-to-be Blackwater Campground in Isle of Wight.

In February, Tempest Smith, a 12-year-old student near Detroit, hanged herself after years of teasing at school for believing in Wicca, a Pagan religion. Smith's mother informed their school district about harassment from Christian students, but it continued.

Wicca was the spiritual path Dunn followed when she first enrolled her child into school. At that time, she let school officials know that her child was being raised differently.

Her kid wore spirit beads and talked about god in the plural.

"I haven't given him a pentagram," Dunn said. "I guess I wouldn't now."

It's not that Dunn doesn't appreciate the symbol sometimes confused with Judaism's six-pointed Star of David or an inverted pentagram used by Satanists, but she has moved from Wicca to a Norse- based religion that echoes her ethnic heritage.

The Hammer of Thor has replaced her pentagram necklace.

Dunn's spiritual search for something more began in 1981.

"What I believed to be correct conflicted with what the Christian church taught," she said. "I couldn't see giving up on things I believed, like reincarnation."

So she read about Buddhism and Islam. They weren't for her.

Then came Wicca, marriage and her child. Only the child remains. "My ex-husband has no problem raising our child Pagan," she said.

Her family has other ideas. Her parents send children's books with Christian messages. She reads the books to her child, explaining their religious significance, just as she did when they read a series of books on world religions.

Dunn's next move to Isle of Wight is something she said was meant to be.

"The first time I stepped onto the campground it felt fabulous," she said. "It felt like home."

FALL GATHERING OF THE TRIBES

* The Fall Gathering of the Tribes will be at the American Sportsman Family Campground (now the Blackwater Campground) from Aug. 30 to Sept. 3.

* Event organizers peg it as a "Pagan revival," where experts in various rituals and beliefs come from across the country and overseas to share knowledge with Pagans from up and down the East Coast.

* Camping, portable water and toilets are on site. Admission is $35 for the weekend. All are welcome.

* The campground is on Whispering Pines Trail in Isle of Wight County. The road runs between Beale Place Drive and Central Hill Road in the central part of the county, west of Windsor.

Michael D. Wamble can be reached at 247-4737 or by e-mail at mwamble@dailypress.com